An iron composite may exhibit activity to living radical polymerization. Iron is a low price metal that is abundant on earth, and due to its high level of stability, it is an important metal in putting living radical polymerization to practical use.
Conventional iron-based catalysts have been prepared in various methods. A method used by Fischer in early stages is the iron-tuning method. Catalysts prepared by this method are characterized to generate a lot of liquid products of compounds combined with oxygen under high pressures, and a lot of carbohydrate compounds under low pressures. However, the method also has a disadvantage of accelerating inactivation, thereby decreasing the productivity.
Another method is preparing an iron-based catalyst by a precipitation method through a process of obtaining slurry by reacting a base with iron nitrate. Such a method exhibits excellent reaction activity of Fischer-Tropsch synthesis.
However, in this method, numerous processes have been added to increase the performance of the catalyst, making the process of preparing the catalyst more complicated. Not only that, it requires a washing process using a lot of distilled water to remove residue, thus causing a problem of environmental pollution.
There are other methods for preparing an iron-based catalyst: impregnating methods and melting methods, but catalysts prepared in these methods are disadvantageous in that they mostly have a formula of Fe3O4(magnetite), and an extremely low specific surface area.
Thus, there has been a need to improve the process of preparing an iron-based catalyst such that the most important performances of an iron-based catalyst can be realized at low cost: excellent indexes such as CO conversion ratio and selectivity of C5+ hydrocarbon and improved productivity.